Quote from Fortune magazine article:"The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents."Why, as the patent holder, does M$ produce such crappy software?

"We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property," says Ballmer in an interview.

That explains why M$ has been found time and again guilty of patent infringement - M$'s honour is not worth the spit it is spoken with.

I been reading up on alot and they are playing the laying the stuff on the table without showing proof! They have nothing. What they want is for the FOSS to pay up without showing proof of infringement. I don't think this is going to happen at all. They are just upset vista isn't selling well.

I been reading up on alot and they are playing the laying the stuff on the table without showing proof! They have nothing.

They haven't brought anything new to the table. The figure of 200+ potential patent infringements had been bandied about for ages.

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What they want is for the FOSS to pay up without showing proof of infringement. I don't think this is going to happen at all.

Well since their lackey's case has fizzled out at last (SCO), and emboldened by their deals with Novell and Samsung they decided to give it another try.

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They are just upset vista isn't selling well.

Sadly, if people continue to be stupid, M$ will get their sales figures eventually. They have already announced the death of XP thus forcing people to vista, machines that will run vista comfortably will become more and more common so there will be less resistance.

This is called "Show them the rod ... but don't hit them" tactic, or seen from another view "the bark is worse than the bite".

It's a scare tactic alright. We've seen how MS sue the crap out of companies or simply buy them out of existence. If MS really has something on FOSS and are able to sue without wreaking havoc for themselves, they would have done it already.

Does M$ have relationships with big corporations that are also users of Open Source?

Not sure if you are referring to the novell suse and microsoft deal. They tried providing a blanket before over and over again even with feeding SCO money for some type of blanket protection and nothing came out of it and now they are trying it again. IBM had the patents long before microsoft ever did and those are long become "free" to say it in a certain perspective. I think microsoft is just asking for it and if IBM steps up, will toss in a salad bowl with dressing while microsoft will try to lure you with a pee.

"We cannot litigate. If we were able to we would have done so years ago"

i belive this is true, to them linux must be a multi headed hydra, they can sue one or two linux producing companies however work will just move to another country or someone else will take is place

dont forget that soem of thier strogest allies employ linux people. for them to start suing linux would cause problems for their "allies". suing linux people wont make them money, hence thier litigation stance.

taking protection money however would make sense from a finacial point of view and i would take a guess and say that thier execs think its a win win situation for everyone, they make money off somthnig they didnt produce and we get protection from bieng sued.

dont forget that soem of thier strogest allies employ linux people. for them to start suing linux would cause problems for their "allies".

And most of their so-called allies are coerced rather than out of any love for M$. Dell's previous flirtations with Linux were quickly quashed by M$, let's see whether its current fling will bear fruit. IBM made a smart move in selling off its PC division to Lenovo - it got rid of a loss making division and more importantly removed a M$ leverage.

M$'s antics seem to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to Linux users. You almost have to be into Linux for the right reasons or go Windows. Maybe it's not such a bad thing.Just another way of looking at it.